I was called a nice girl. You know, every girls favorite compliment. Not that I am looking to be a bad girl but nice? I am nice. So it fits. But it’s not always the thing we girls want to hear. I can’t even figure out why it’s bothering me. I want to be nice. I aim to be nice. I just am nice.
A man was trying to describe me to an employee so he could ask for me by name, he starts his sentence with this, “I don’t want to be rude in describing her….but you have a white girl who knows about trees there.” My employee stopped him. He knew he meant me from the tree part. Yet also didn’t want to hear what rude description he was about to present. Who starts a sentence like that? What was his description about to be? No good comes out of saying I don’t want to be rude describing a person. Was the use of the word white rude? It is just a color description. This day and age it is seen as rude on all color spectrums. It’s a risky way to start a description. But, I am white. And also nice.
Later he called back and asked for me by name. Now that he knows it. He did once, he forgot it. When I answer he tells me he knows I talk to hundreds of people and so he will describe himself to me so I can get a better picture. I stopped him. I knew who he was. He kills arborvitae by not watering the way I say to. He is in his 4th batch of plants. But yet he tells me anyway, “I’m a tall black man” what?? Then I insisted he stop describing himself. But he still kept going. I didn’t know how to get out of this conversation. He is an alcoholic. He has come to my place of work and confronted me about his dead plants and been told to leave. I have physically gone to his home to water his plants properly. He dug them up and moved them. He ran sprinklers and did weird amendments to the soils to “help”. He tells me he was a navy seal. I can’t see it. He likes things to add up. He can’t get an exact answer and measurement out of me for care of plants and it infuriates him in the night. I worry he could kidnap me and make me care for his plants. That seems extreme but I have seen his extremes.
One of my employees dog died. This is sad. I know. I’ve lost dozens of dogs. Because I love dogs. Just none have lived forever just like my dad didn’t. Pets die. People die
She can’t work. She barely can at her best. She is sadness. Like literally the girl from the movie Inside Out. Blue hair and glasses and all. When we hired her I said no. She was not my vote. She couldn’t tell me her name. I asked what she would like to be called since her application said one thing and her several follow up emails said another. She tells me a story of her name. In the end, I have no idea still what to call her. To this day I can’t seem to call her the right name. She tells me she knows plants yet never talks about plants. When I ask her about plants she tells me she has always wanted to work for us. She avoided all plant related questions.
Her first day she called late. The next she called in. Then the next she went to the bathroom 7 times. She demanded steel toe boots when I asked her to use a pitch fork. I gave the task to someone else. I worried she might stab her foot. She must have at some point. She worries me. I’m worried she is smoking weed at work. I worry I don’t care. I assume most the staff do. I figure I am the only one who doesn’t.
She asks to leave for the second day after her dog died. She has now taken more time for her dog than I have for my dad. She seems to be able to barely breath. Like me, only she shows it. She hangs her head low and walks slumped and low. She is the girl I told she is weak. That I blurted out she is weak. She looked crushed. I meant it a way to be said different but it came out as me seeing her as weak not that we all feel weak during loss. I now am worried I compounded her grief. I should not give ill advised advice during periods of devastating grief. I will have to explain to her what I meant. She will not work. I am certain she isn’t quite not weak enough to work for us. We have to be weak but not show not. Because we are all a little weak. Especially when sad. We hide it. Avoid it. Deal with it away from the place. Or at our place.
The place full of plants. How can you feel anything but not weak around everything that grows. It’s the place to be to gather strength. I absorb my plants energies. I feel growth by seeing it right before my eyes. If it weren’t for my work I would show weak. I would walk slumped and carry a cloud of gloom. Constant rain cloud just on me. Like her. Why can’t she feel this when she works? That same feeling. It is a select few who last with us. The horticulture industry is hard. It’s for the weak who want to be strong.
I am sure I didn’t inhale weed. I know I didn’t. That’s why it didn’t work. I didn’t want it to. I’m afraid to lose control of my mind. I don’t have a problem with my busy mind. Others do. I can’t get myself to fill my lungs with anything other than the polluted air I breath or maybe like campfire smoke. Along with any other unintended vapors I don’t know about. I’m told it’s a plant what could be harmful. I don’t know. There are two sides. Some say it is some say it isn’t. So it’s best to just stay neutral and not find out. I think of my grandpa and his lung cancer. My grandma and hers. My dad and his weakened lungs from a disease he was born with that didn’t know how to protect his lungs. I know how to protect my lungs and so does my body. So why let something destroy them or not. It’s a simple control of me.
That being said, I could try to eat weed or drink it. It’s in all forms. Why? Why are there so many ways to get high? Why are there so many people who want or need to be high? Why are there so many people who want me to be? I could make a tea. And call it my tea at night. Or I could chew them up like a gummy bear. Or I could make some brownies or some compound butter for my steaks. I could probably get an eye drop. Or maybe a toothpaste. I don’t know where it starts and where it ends. Our world will be consumed by weed. It would consume me. It’s best to keep that little barrier nice and firm. I’m not that curious anymore. I was. I tried and now I’m past it. I didn’t really even try out of fear of losing my mind. Some get more anxious from it. I have seen my more anxious. I don’t need to add to my anxious.
At one of my trips there was a missing person along the river. The river we had set my tent up to sleep on. We had just smoked weed. Although I really didn’t. There were cops everywhere looking for a lady who was trying to hang herself off a cliff or jump or something. They never approached our tent. They cruised past down the river and said they would talk to us on the way back. On the way back? Like they would turn around and go back up the river and ask us if we saw a missing person? Why wait? What if she was right there in our tent? I hoped I didn’t go missing in this park. We packed up to leave fearing the police everywhere and the weed in the system.
We leave and the deputy stops us. He casually asked what we are doing down there. I blurt out we are trying to camp along the river but you have police everywhere and not saying why. He laughs. Laughs. Then says. Yay, just a missing person. A suicidal, white female. Just a missing person? His truck has a magnet for his title. He is a deputy by night. What by day? He was not even worried about clearly there being weed. Or maybe it wasn’t clear? Maybe I just look like a nice white girl out enjoying camp. Nothing to worry about. I’m not the missing white female so there are no worries. Yet he never ask if we have seen a white suicidal female.
We ask if we can go back and he says that’s a better question for the ranger. She is down by the river. What? Why didn’t he know. Why was he just sitting there. We head back. We pass the ranger. Like she is leaving the river as we head back down. She stops and just looks at our car. Then drives away. Likely told I was a nice white girl and nothing to worry about.
We go back. Set back up. Third time setting my tent up. By my car this time. Then lay down and headlights appear. She returned about half an hour later and comes up to the tent to tell us we can’t camp there, just along the river. I explain we tried but we couldn’t sleep from all the chaos no one explained. We were trying to get to the trail head and the roads in Missouri at night make no sense and make even less sense during the day. She laughs. Everyone laughs here in the middle of the night while looking for suicidal white females. She says we are close and to follow her and she will drive us right to the trail head.
We follow her. I can’t believe we just pack up again and follow this little ball of fire ranger. She talks and talks about this trail we are going to do. It’s her favorite. She just did it. It’s really 20 miles not 14. She has personally blazed it. Like she didn’t like the amount of blazes so she added more. She drives like she owns the roads. Leaving us in dust more than not. She was like a little pistol. Her white car cruising though the Missouri mountains. I wanted her job.
We get to the trail head and she gets out a map and lays it on her hood of her super expensive brand new white explorer with a bike attached to the back. She said they have a lot of logging going on and to watch for the blazes. I tell her stories of times i have been lost on logging trails. I still don’t know her name. In my mind it’s stardust. I also haven’t decided if she is a boy or a girl. She has me take pictures of her map which would later help me get unlost. I ask if there are bike trails here and point to her expensive bike. She says no. Just like that. Why the bike then? She said the department bought 6. But why?
Then she leaves. I half expected her to be sitting there waiting the next morning to blaze trails with us. I needed to know her name.
When we were near the end of the trail we got off the trail. Onto a logging road. This is a common issue with me. We had been steering to the water constantly getting us off trail so I said we needed to quit. Next thing I know we are about 3 miles from the water. We are supposed to follow the water but never cross it. So I veered is too far away at one point. We were now lost. Not even on a trail. I have seen how this place handles lost and missing people…would the deputy throw that magnet on during the day? Or just at night? I don’t want to be lost here at night. Or ever.
I walked us up and found a signal. Called the resort and told them to contact a ranger and gave her my sort of location by a gate and told her I was heading us back straight East through the woods to get back on track. That I was a white female blond hair and my name . Just in case, just in case the same people were looking for us that did the woman from the night before. I really wanted them to know what I looked like to find me.
We walked for about two hours and all of a sudden hit the trail again. It worked. I knew it would if I never left East. My picture of stardust’s map showed me terrain I couldn’t load on my maps with no signal. It also showed the current logging roads and trails that maps don’t show. We finished the trail and towards the end we noticed flags like everywhere. Like every ten feet. They also weren’t on the trail. These were stardust’s blazes. She really blazed it. Wrong. We followed them for awhile until I said this is so wrong. We went back. She must have done it in the winter months. They would have gotten us out but out straight out of the woods through the woods. Off trail.
The rangers drove up when we were leaving. They had been looking for us. They were worried we had gotten off on the logger trail. Which I had. They tend to remove blazes without knowing it. She asked me to show her where I think we went wrong, she would re-blaze. Rangers love to blaze. The rangers had just my name and my cell number. The resort lady never told her I said we had just climbed over a gate and the description of us. This ranger said they weren’t worried because the ranger from the night before Stardust, that took us to the trail head said I was a very skilled and experienced hiker. That I would either sit and wait for help or find my way out. This shocked me given that most times I hike I get lost. Then get unlost. I ask her name. It’s Ellie. Ellie? It doesn’t fit, but confirms a girl. She will always be stardust in my mind.
Nice girl? I am so much more than a nice white girl.
Aspenleaf 